LONDON

The UK should resist being drawn into a conflict in the Middle East unless it is directly attacked, said Emily Thornberry, the chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, on Saturday.

Israel launched an attack against Iran early Saturday under the name ‘Lion’s Roar,’ declaring a “special and immediate” state of emergency across the country.

The UK government said it "does not want to see further escalation into a wider regional conflict," after the US and Israel launched an attack on Iran.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today program, Thornberry said she did not believe recent US-Israeli strikes were legal.

The Labour MP said: “As far as I’m aware, we’re not involved in this. There’s not been British agreement to be involved in this, and I think that’s the right thing to do. I don’t think that there’s a legal basis for this action.”

She added that the US and Israel “were not under imminent threat, and so it’s therefore difficult to see what the legal justification is.”

Asked whether the UK should resist being drawn into the conflict, Thornberry said: “Absolutely, unless we’re attacked ourselves, which, as I say, unfortunately this morning, we don’t know whether we will be because there may be attacks by the Iranians on western bases in the Arab Gulf, and so then the situation may change. We just don’t know.”

Meanwhile, the leader of the opposition, Kemi Badenoch, said she supported the US and Israeli attacks on Iran.

“I stand with our allies in the US and Israel as they take on the threat of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its vile regime," she said on the US social media company X.

"The same regime that carries out attacks on the UK and on our citizens, that seeks to build nuclear weapons that would threaten our country and that brutally repressed pro-democracy protests only months ago and murdered thousands of its own people," she added.